The Violin Conspiracy

This fine arts thriller begins with a bang: Ray McMillian may be the most talented young musician in the world. Two weeks before the most important competition of his life, he opens his violin case after getting off a flight and discovers his $10 million dollar Stradivarius is gone—replaced by a white Chuck Taylor and a ransom note. I was hooked! Slocumb then takes us back in time to show us how Ray, a young Black man from North Carolina who doesn't have the family wealth or privilege so many of his classical music peers do, fell in love with both music and his great-great grandfather's fiddle, and came to devote his life to winning the Tschaikovsky Competition—and how he came to own a $10 million Strad! We also experience many painful and heart-pounding instances of the racism Ray experiences as a Black man moving through a space that's predominantly white—and how his Blackness is used against him by those who wish to claim his violin as their own. I loved this, and JD Jackson's narration was the icing on the cake.